Aeschylus

“ Yonder I see Orestes' Nurse, a-stream
With tears.—How now, Kilissa, whither bound,
And Grief the unbidden partner of thy round?
Nurse.
The mistress bids me call Aigisthos here
Quickly, to see these two, and learn more clear,
As man from man, the truth of what they tell.
Oh, to us slaves she makes it pitiable
And grievous, and keeps hid behind her eyes
The leaping laughter. Aye, 'tis a rich prize
For her, and for the House stark misery,
This news the travellers tell so trippingly.
And, Oh, Aigisthos, he, you may be sure,
Will laugh to hear it! . . . Ah, I am a poor
Old woman! ”

“ The edges of the blades that slay
⁠Creep forth to battle: shall it be
⁠Death, death for all eternity,
On Agamemnon's House this day;
Or sudden a new light of morn,
⁠A beacon fire for freedom won,
⁠The old sweet rule from sire to son,
And golden Argolis reborn?
Against two conquerors all alone,
⁠His last death-grapple, deep in blood,
Orestes joineth. . . . O great God,
Give victory! ”

“ Electra.
Methinks that is a riddle quickly read!
Leader.
Thy thought is swift; and may thine elder know?
Electra.
What head save mine would blazon thus its woe?
Leader.
She that should mourn him is his enemy.
Electra (musing, to herself) .
Strange bird, but of one feather to mine eye. . .
Leader.
With what? Oh, speak. Make thy comparison.
Electra.
Look; think ye not 'tis wondrous like mine own?
Leader.
Thy brother's! . . . Sent in secret! Can it be?
Electra.
'Tis like his long locks in my memory.
Leader.
Orestes! Would he dare to walk this land?
Electra. ”

“ Hast thou thy messenger to speak to men?
Blast this most royal oak, what shade shall cool
Thine altars on the death-day of the Bull?
But cherish us, and from a little seed
Thou shalt make great a House now fallen indeed.
Leader.
O Children, Saviours of your father's House,
Be silent! Children, all is perilous;
And whoso hears may idly speak of ye
To our masters; whom may I yet live to see
Dead where the pine logs ooze in fragrant fire!
Orestes. (He speaks with increasing horror as he proceeds.) ”

“ Enter from the country Aigisthos.
Aigisthos.
A message called me; else I scarce had thought
To have come so quick. 'Tis a strange rumour, brought,
They tell me, by some Phocian wayfarers
In passing: strange, nor grateful to our ears.
Orestes dead! A galling load it were
And dripping blood for this poor House to bear,
Still scored and festerous with its ancient wound.
How shall I deem it? Living truth and sound?
Or tales of women, born to terrify,
That wildly leap, and up in mid-air die?
What know ye further? I would have this clear. ”

“ Orestes.
'Tis simply told. This woman makes her way
Within, and ye my charges shall obey,
That they who slew by guile a man most rare,
By guile, and snarèd in the self-same snare,
May die, as Lord Apollo hath foretold,
Loxias the Seer, who never failed of old.
⁠First, I array me in a stranger's guise,
With all the gear of travel, and likewise
This man—their guest and battle-guest of yore!
Then hither shall we come, and stand before
The courtyard gate, and call. Aye, we will teach
Our tongues an accent of Parnassian speech,
Like men in Phôkis born. ”

“ Clytemnestra.
To kill thy mother, Child: is that thy will?
Orestes.
I kill thee not: thyself it is doth kill.
Clytemnestra.
A mother hath her Watchers: think and quail!
Orestes.
How shall I 'scape my Father's if I fail?
Clytemnestra (to herself) .
Living, I cry for mercy to a tomb!
Orestes.
Yea, from the grave my father speaks thy doom.
Clytemnestra.
Ah God! The serpent that I bare and fed!
Orestes.
Surely of truth prophetic is the dread
That walketh among dreams. Most sinfully
Thou slewest: now hath Sin her will of thee. ”

“ As he turns, he sees the Libation-Bearers approaching.
Ha!
What sight is this? What stricken multitude
Of women here in raiment sable-hued
Far-gleameth? How shall I interpret it?
Hath some new death upon my lineage lit?
Or is it to my father's grave they go
With offerings, to appease the wrath below?
It must be. Surely 'tis Electra there,
My sister, moves alone, none like to her
In sorrow. Zeus, Oh, grant to me this day
My vengeance, and be near me in the fray!
Come, Pylades, stand further, till we know
More sure, what means this embassy of woe. ”

“ Hast cared for me. . . . O Victory, be our own
This day, with Justice who doth hold us fast,
And Zeus most high, who saveth at the last!
Orestes.
O Zeus, O Zeus, look down on our estate!
Hast seen thine eagle's brood left desolate,
The father in the fell toils overborne
Of some foul serpent, and the young forlorn
And starved with famine, still too weak of wing
To bear to the nest their father's harvesting? ”

“ Clytemnestra, though she appears only for two short scenes, preserves still the almost superhuman grandeur which was hers in the Agamemnon, Her simplest word has power to arrest the attention; and while she is present other people seem small and their emotions ordinary. Her own emotions lie deep and complex, fold behind fold. It is shallow to dismiss her as a hypocrite, feigning grief at the death of the son whom she fears. ”

“ Enter from the House Orestes with drawn swords
Orestes.
'Tis thou I seek. With him my work is done.
Clytemnestra (suddenly failing) .
Woe's me!
Aigisthos, my beloved, my gallant one!
Orestes.
Thou lovest him! Go then and lay thine head
Beside him. Thou shalt not betray the dead. ”

“ Thou reck'st not of a Mother's Curse, my child?
Orestes.
Not hers who cast me out into the wild.
Clytemnestra.
Cast out? I sent thee to a war-friend's Hall.
Orestes.
A free man's heir, ye sold me like a thrall.
Clytemnestra.
If thou wast sold, where is the price I got?
Orestes.
The price! . . . For very shame I speak it not.
Clytemnestra.
Speak. But tell, too, thy father's harlotries.
Orestes.
Judge not the toiler, thou who sitt'st at ease!
Clytemnestra.
A woman starves with no man near, my son.
Orestes.
Her man's toil wins her bread when he is gone. ”

“ To speak, when offerings like these are poured. . . .
Or shall I pray him, as men's custom is,
To send to them who pay these offices
Requital due . . . for murder and for pride?
Or, as in silence and in shame he died,
In shame and silence shall I pour this urn
Of offering to the dust, and pouring turn,
As men cast out some foulness they abhor,
And fling the cup, and fly, and look no more? ”

“ Yet long ago in Phokis, where I lay
With Strophius in the hills, being cast away
In childhood, plundered by mine enemies,
And friendless, save for this man, Pylades,
I sware an oath which should for ever set
In memory those they taught me to forget:
If once I came to manhood, so I sware,
In tresses twain I would divide mine hair,
One tress for Inachos river, by whose grace
I live, and one for mourning at this place. ”

“ Aigisthos lieth slain.
Unbar, unbar, with all the speed ye may
The women's gates! Oh, tear the bolts away! . . .
God, but it needs a man, a lusty one,
To help us, when all time for help is gone!
What ho!
I babble to deaf men, and labouring cry,
To ears sleep-charmèd, words that fail and die.
Where art thou, Clytemnestra? What dost thou? . . .
'Fore God, 'tis like to be her own neck now,
In time's revenge, that shivers to its fate. ”

“ Chorus.
'Tis written: the shed drop doth crave
⁠For new blood. Yea, the murdered cry
Of dead men shrieketh from the grave
⁠To Her who out of sins gone by
⁠Makes new sin, that the old may die.
Orestes. ”

“ Climbing the flesh; lichens, which eat away
Even unto nothingness our natural clay.
And when they leave him, a man's hair is white.
For him that disobeys, he said, the night
Hath Furies, shapen of his father's blood;
Clear-seen, with eyeball straining through the hood
Of darkness. The blind arrows of dead men
Who cried their kin for mercy and were slain,
And madness, and wild fear out of the night,
Shall spur him, rack him, till from all men's sight
Alone he goes, out to the desert dim,
And that bronze horror clanging after him! ”

“ The ache of a heart that rageth in the dust.
⁠Only behind the fold
Of this still veil for a little I hide my face
And weep for the blind doings of this race,
And secret tears are in my heart, ice-cold.
Electra.
Ye thrallèd women, tirers of the bower,
Since ye are with me in this suppliant hour,
Your escort giving, give your counsel too.
What speech have I for utterance, when I sue
With offerings to the dead? What word of love,
What prayer to reach my father from above?
"To dear Lord," shall I say, "due gifts I bear
From loving mistress" . . . when they come from her? ”

“ With the dirge of Agbatana I beat my breast:
⁠Like the Keeners of Kissia, I make songs of pain.
Lo, yearning of arms abundant, east and west:
⁠Tearing they smite, again and yet again,
From above, from high; yea, God hath smitten red
This bitter bleeding bosom, this bended head.
Electra. ”

“ Death-cry of Aigisthos within. ⁠Ha! The deed is done!
Leader.
How? What is wrought? Stand further from the door
Till all is over. Move apart before
Men mark, and deem us sharers in the strife.
For after this 'tis war, for death or life. ”

“ For in truth the subjects are not, artistically speaking, quite the same. The main interest of the other plays is to describe how the woman Electra felt and acted with regard to the murder of her mother and step-father; in this play it is to narrate how Agamemnon, the long dead, was awakened to help his children to avenge him. The ghosts in Homer could not speak till they had drunk the blood of sacrifice. Somewhat in the same way the dead Agamemnon here cannot gather his dim senses till the drink-offerings have sunk into his grave. ”

“ Orestes could probably have lived in comfort if he had been willing to accept a large blood-price from Aigisthos and say no more about it. He prefers, with all its misery and danger, the absolute fulfilment of his duty to his father. To us, and in this special case to Aeschylus, the rule of vengeance seems savage. We speak glibly of the "duty of forgiveness." But it should be remembered that we expect the police to arrest the offender and the judge to see that he is hanged. In Orestes' days men had to do justice on the wicked with their own hands, or else leave them unpunished and triumphant. ”

“ There is no invocation scene in Sophocles; there is a brief one in Euripides (Electra 671–685) . It has great emotional effect but is only about 15 lines long and does not attempt to produce the cumulative impression of this scene, in which we feel human suffering and love gradually breaking through the barriers of death and earth and darkness. At the end the dead Agamemnon is awake, and Orestes hardly needs to think about the details of his dangerous plot. A power more than mortal is behind him. ”

“ The murderess had mutilated the body; cut off the dead man's feet so that he could not pursue, and his hands so that he could not lay hold of her. This would make Agamemnon helpless, and so leave Orestes without hope. The unexpected abomination breaks Orestes down.—This device of terrified murderers is a piece of primitive magic. It is attributed to Clytemnestra by Sophocles (Electra 445) , and to the witch Medea by Apollonius Rhodius.
P. 38, l. 471, "The House hath healing," i.e. the House itself can cure bloodshed by bloodshed, sin by vengeance. ”

“ By fortune, 'tis by tidings prosperous
I fain were known and welcomed. Pleasantest
Of all ties is the tie of host and guest.
But my heart told me 'twere a faithless thing
To fail a comrade in accomplishing
His charge, when I had pledged both word and hand.
Clytemnestra.
Not for our sorrow shall thy portion stand
The lowlier, nor thyself be less our friend.
Another would have told us; and the end
Is all one. But 'tis time that strangers who
Have spent long hours in travel should have due
Refreshment. Ho, there! ”

“ The scene represents the Grave of Agamemnon, a mound of earth in a desolate expanse. The time is afternoon. Orestes and Pylades in the garb of travelers, with swords at their sides, are discovered. Orestes' hair is cut short, that of Pylades streams down his back. Both look grim and travel-stained. Orestes holds a long tress of hair in his hand. ”

“ The mother-murder, even if done by a god's command, is a sin; a sin to be expiated by unfathomable suffering. Yet, since the god cannot have commanded evil, it is a duty also. It is a sin that must be committed." The crucial difference is that the Choëphoroe is not self-contained, while the other plays are. They are concerned with a particular story; it is part of a trilogy dealing with the great problem which lies at the centre of Greek religion—Hubris, Dike, Soteria or Crime, Punishment and Deliverance. (I may refer the reader to my introductions to the Agamemnon and to Euripides' Electra.) ”

“ Force, when the man himself is there to speak.
Aigisthos.
Hear him I will, and question him beside.
Was this man with Orestes when he died,
Or speaks he too from rumour? If he lies . . .
He cannot cheat a mind that is all eyes. ”

“ Always the thing she says, fine as it is, leaves the impression that there is something greater that she does not care to say. Even when she calls for the axe of battle to face her son, she has room for a thought beyond the immediate fight for dear life: "To that meseemeth we are come, we two!" ”

“ Orestes is shaken by the first sight of his mother in the distance, and actually rebels against the god or devil who has commanded him to kill her, till he is overborne by the scorn and passion of Electra's more bitter nature. ”

“ The death of her beloved unstrings her. One would like to know whether Aeschylus meant her actually to have the axe and drop it, or whether Orestes is intended to come too soon. Note with what intensity even when the fight has gone out of her she fences for her life. Every line of the scene is charged with meaning and feeling. The thing that breaks her is the sudden realization (928) that this is the serpent of her dream. ”